Artist Roni Landa talks about her life long obsession with death and its expression in her artwork. A fascinating and fun talk about our intrinsic fears, human denial and art as the culprit of chaos.

About the speaker

Roni Landa, graduate of the Textile Design department in Shenkar College of Engineering, Design & Art (2011), was born in Israel and today creates in Tel-Aviv.

Roni focuses on sculpting in polymeric clay and its different structures. Her techniques are inspired by classic sculpting, product design and at times, borrowed from the culinary realm, all of which she translates into her own world of images and imagination.

In her work she attends to the dark and complex sides of our being. She wishes to recreate the moment of acknowledging and meeting death face to face, an issue which occupies her from childhood.

Her works can be viewed as if somewhere between a polished aesthetics and a Sisyphean toil. This tension aims to create a dialog with the observer – on one hand, at first glance, a small, known, and easy on the eyes work while on the other hand, a very complex, sensual, rough, dark and disturbing image. This experience is accented by the mostly monotonic color scheme – choosing soft colors creates a naïve, soft, pop like look and texture, that is contradictory to the harsh experiences at its base.

Roni’s inspiration comes from nature, design, pop- surrealism and kitsch. However, she is also very much drawn to side margins, abnormalities, fetishism, pervert and memento mori, as well.